10 Leadership Lessons from Afghanistan

In President Biden’s address to the American people after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he devoted much of his speech to the reasons for ending the Afghanistan War, which was initiated by his predecessor Donald Trump.   This was never the issue since nearly 70% of Americans no longer supported remaining. The withdrawal decision was not the problem. 

Over a period of 15 days, 14-30 August 2021, the world witnessed the debacle of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.  It was also a series of key lessons on inept, incompetent, and the lack of strategic leadership. The debacle that ensued from 14 August 2031 resulted from leadership failure at the highest level of the US President and his advisors to plan for the anticipated outcome which US military and intelligence officials have insisted to be inevitable for years.

Leadership is challenging during normal conditions. Crisis leadership however calls for exceptional leadership. The 15-days US withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, provided key lessons for our Leadership Course. 

Here are 10 key Leadership lessons from Kabul, Afghanistan.

[1] The Last Man Out – Mission Accomplished, But …

The last person to leave Kabul, Afghanistan, on 30 August 2021, was US Army Major-General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps. The above picture showed him boarding the last C-17 cargo plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport, to mark the end of America’s longest war.

The leader leads from the front. He/she is also the last person out during a retreat or withdrawal.  Chris had led nearly 6,000 soldiers to evacuate more than 123,000 people from Kabul in a historic airlift after the Taliban was allowed to seize Kabul city by mid-August. A leader is focused on his mission, designed and executed with clear unambiguous objectives, and then exited at the end.

For General Chris Donahue, it was “Mission Accomplished”, with 13 of his soldiers killed and nearly another 20 injured to a single suicide bomber attack. This is the direct result of his inept and incompetent Commander-in-Chief who wanted only the Hamid Kazai International Airport (AKIA) without any additional extended perimeter for protection, and who agreed to have no US soldiers manning any checkpoints in the approaches outside the airport gates.     

The suicide bomb was claimed by the terror group ISIS-K. It resulted in at least 182 people killed, including 169 Afghan civilians and 13 US service members.   Furthermore, at least 150 more people were injured, including 18 US military personnel and a number of Taliban members. The American deaths were the first of American service deaths in Afghanistan since February 2020 and were the largest single loss of life of US military personnel since the 2011 Afghanistan Boeing Chinook shootdown.

[2] Leaders Have Competent Judgement and Strategic Insight

When faced with the choice of retaining Bagram Airport together with the AKIA, President Biden’s choice of only AKIA was the tipping strategic error that defied all military insight and judgment.  It was also against the advice of his senior and field military commanders.

Bagram’s exit in the quiet of night on 2 July 2021 was not in accordance with logical military strategy to withdraw orderly in the sequence of people, equipment and, lastly, soldiers. It lacked strategic planning and careful risk evaluation in the most unlikely event. 

Furthermore, the US quietly abandoned Bagram Air Base at 3 am surreptitiously without informing the local Afghani forces whom it had trained and fought alongside for the past 20 years. The Americans left behind about 3.5 million items including thousands of water bottles, energy drinks, and military ready-made meals (MREs).  And also, thousands of civilian vehicles, without keys, and hundreds of armoured vehicles, Blackhawk helicopters, drones, and hi-tech ordnance. They also took heavy weapons with them and detonated some ammunition stocks, but left behind small weapons and ammunition for the Afghans.

At its height, Bagram Air Base was home to several thousands of troops. It ballooned from a small Afghan airbase to a mini-city with swimming pools, cinemas, spas and imported fast food outlets Pizza Hut and Burger King.

The unforced abandonment of Bagram Air Base, about 2 months earlier than originally scheduled for 31 August invariably created the impression on the Taliban that the US has lost any motivation to fight and remain in Afghanistan. Its failure to inform local Afghani forces, who discovered the empty Air Base only after looters had entered the “lights-out” base some 5 hours later, is evidence of its distrust of the Afghani soldiers whom it had fought alongside for 20 years.

The Wall Street Journal reported on 14 August, “In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the US pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.”  

Earlier on 8 July 2021, a reporter had told President Biden: “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse,” to which a defensive Biden responded, “That is not true.” He added that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”  Biden repeatedly claimed that the Afghan army simply folded because it didn’t want to fight.  His decision on Bagram actually incapacitated the Afghani forces and vital air cover.

The Taliban began to take over regional capital cities within 2 months of the US withdrawal from Bagram. Local Afghan forces also lost their will and motivation to resist given their loss of air protective cover from Bagram as well as their US counterparts and trainers who had cut and run, and deserted them. Their march into the Capital City of Kabul was inevitable, even as the Afghani President fled, reportedly (but unverified) with planeloads of cash, instead of mobilizing his purported 300,000 soldiers to resist and fight.

[3] Leaders are Honest to the People

US President Biden had promised to extricate all American citizens as well as Special Visa holders and their families before the completion of the Mission.

Yet, he announced on Tuesday that only “90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave”. The world remembered that just 2 weeks earlier on 19 August, he told ABC News that "if there are American citizens left" after the 31 August withdrawal deadline, then "we're going to stay until we get them all out". He did not keep his promise. 

US officials estimated that up to 200 Americans, perhaps more, were left behind after the departure of the last US troops from Afghanistan.  Honesty is a core trait of authentic leadership that is visibly missing during the 15-day crisis.  

[4] Leaders Listen to Critical Intelligence

A July 2021 State Department internal Memo warned President Biden that the Taliban were advancing faster than previously expected and that the Afghan government could collapse shortly after the 31 Aug 2021 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. 

Again, President Biden lied to the American people that no one had predicted Kabul could fall so quickly.  President Biden told the American people that “the consensus by the intelligence community” was that it would not happen because Afghanistan had already 300,000 US-trained soldiers while the Taliban only had 75,000.

President Biden in fact knew the Taliban were overtaking the Afghan government — and asked Afghanistan President Ghani to lie about it. The perception “is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.” Ghani gave him the facts: “We are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this.”  President Biden ignored the feedback from the Afghani President.

President Biden’s dismissal of vital critical intelligence was fatal, and led to the blitzkrieg sweep of the Taliban across Afghanistan with astonishing speed and force in a matter of days without any resistance by the purported 300,000 local Afghani soldiers.

[5] Leaders Are Present During Crisis

During a crisis, leaders are expected to be present to assure confidence and provide the guiding focus of command. After tracking the Taliban’s steady territorial gains since 23 July 2021, followed by the 6 August 2021 fall of the first provincial capital, Zaranj, of Nimruz province, on the border with Iran, President Biden, after 2 full days from the fall of Kabul, finally made his first speech to the American people, without taking any questions, before returning hastily to Camp David to continue his vacation. In fact, he was initially scheduled to remain in Camp David until Wednesday.  The notion of “leading from the front” appeared to elude the Commander-in-Chief.

The White House had released a photograph of a casually dressed Biden receiving a briefing on Sunday where he appeared alone at a large conference table as senior administration officials beamed in from the White House, Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and Doha, the Qatari capital. Whither the Situation Room? The Situation Room in The Pentagon was designed specifically for such real-time, hands-on crisis management and briefing.

For most of the 15 days of the Afghan debacle attributed directly to him, President Biden was not seen on network TV.  His personal leadership seems so immaterial and irrelevant during America’s greatest foreign policy blunder. The courage to face the people boldly, daily, and directly to inspire hope and optimism is a mark of exceptional leadership. 

[6] Leaders Take Questions from the People

President Biden deliberately refused to be randomly questioned during his Press Conference until the ABC interview on 18 August 2021, 4 days after the fall of Kabul. The next day, 19 August 2021, President Biden again refused to take questions from reporters about the collapse of Afghanistan after he instead gave a 15-min speech attacking conservatives and Republicans who've refused to get vaccinated and wear masks.  

A news commentator said: “Watching President Biden's COVID remarks (instead of on Afghanistan) and have concluded that each speech will result in a net-negative instead of net-positive with the public. Too programmed. Too packaged. Too awkward. Takes no questions again, which looks weak and cowardly”. 

And when he did take questions from reporters, he referred to a prepared list of “favoured” persons whom his staff has “instructed him to point to”.  This is clearly a leadership weakness, in being afraid of “difficult” questions from reporters on the ongoing Kabul crisis.

[7] Leaders Hold Themselves Accountable by Being Responsible

President Biden repeatedly said that “the buck stops with him”, and then proceeded to blame others eg. former President Trump and Afghan forces for his Kabul debacle. The senior members of his national security team had also sought to shift blame for the collapse of the Afghan government on the country's defense forces, which they said lacked the will to defend their country against the Taliban.  Blame is the favourite tool of incompetent and feckless leadership.

He should learn from his Marine Battalion Commander who was relieved of his command after calling out military leaders over the Afghanistan debacle.

Marine battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, commands the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  His first assignment in 2005 was in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, one of the units deployed to Kabul to facilitate the evacuation of US citizens and Afghan refugees.

He rebuked the senior military officers involved in the Kabul exit mission in a viral Facebook video because of his “growing discontent and contempt for my perceived ineptitude at the foreign policy level and I want to specifically ask some questions to some of my senior leaders.”  For the act of “insubordination”, he was relieved of his command and duty, and will leave the Marine Corps for “cause based on lack of trust and confidence”.  He was aware that public criticism of leadership would violate protocol and could result in his being demoted or discharged. Nonetheless, he decided that it was important to “risk his pension, which is just 3 years away, risk my current battalion commander seat, my retirement, my family’s stability to say some of the things I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, and accountability from my senior leaders,” he added. As a matter of honour and love for his uniform, he was disgusted that none of the senior officers are “raising their hands and accepting accountability and saying ‘we messed this up’”.

“We have a secretary of defense who testified to Congress in May (2021) that the Afghan National Security Force could withstand the Taliban advance. We have chairmen of the Joint Chiefs [of Staff] … were supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people were supposed to advise. I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever. But I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say ‘hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield strategic airbase before we evacuate everyone,'” he said.

After the carnage in Kabul on Thursday, 26 August, Republican lawmakers demanded President Biden’s resignation or impeachment. Many Democratic legislators have agreed with their Republican colleagues that the execution of the pull-out was an unmitigated disaster while claiming that withdrawal was generally the right choice. Some members have called for a formal investigation into the events preceding and surrounding the exit.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy also said that President Biden would face a “reckoning” for his handling of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan but did not call for him to step down.

Referring to a letter by the Pentagon which insisted that the Marines’ fellow comrades in arms did not fight or die in vain, Scheller questioned whether that was in fact true, given the botched withdrawal and haphazard evacuation that left a steep American death toll and an even steeper Afghan death toll.

“From my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don’t have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say ‘we did not do this well,” Scheller concluded. “Without that, the higher military ranks are not holding up their end of the bargain,” he said. “I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, ‘I demand accountability.’”

President Biden and his senior Pentagon and National Security officials, as well as the Chief of Staff and Armed Services Chief, should be reminded to set personal role models and examples for across the military ranks to demonstrate the values of “Duty, Honour and Country” inculcated into soldiers and officers in their respective military academies and institutions. Leaders hold themselves accountable by being responsible.  

[8] Leaders Communicate with Consistent Messages

In President Biden’s address to the American people after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he said that “nation-building in Afghanistan never made any sense to me”. Fact-checkers have confirmed that he explicitly and repeatedly advocated nation-building in the early years of the war in Afghanistan. Until at least 2004, he had called for nation-building both in Afghanistan and in the world more broadly. Granted, President Biden may have changed his position in recent years.

However, in October 2001, after the Bush administration began bombing Afghanistan, Biden was asked on CBS: "Should we be in the business of nation-building?" He responded, "Absolutely, along with the rest of the world."

At another committee meeting in February 2003, Biden repeated his warning that "the alternative to nation-building is chaos."

In a February 2004 report on the Princeton University website, Biden issued a general endorsement of nation-building in a speech: "We also need a new attitude, an attitude that suggests that projecting power should not occur in an elective war absent a commitment to staying power. Don't project the power unless you're prepared to have staying power. Nation-building - that 'four-letter word' in this administration up to now - is an absolute prerequisite for the 21st century."

In September 2004, Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, "we also have to take seriously nation-building. This administration came to office disdaining the concept, only to be confronted with the two biggest nation-building challenges since World War II. Thus far, it merits a failing grade in both Afghanistan and Iraq." Biden wrote that a Democratic administration "would empower experts to plan post-conflict reconstruction ahead of time, not on the fly." That was before he became the Vice-President of President Obama in 2008.

It is noteworthy that according to estimates by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the US has spent more than US$2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan. This includes the direct funding cost of US$800 billion and US$83 billion to train the Afghan army. Since 2001, the US has appropriated more than US$144bn for Afghan reconstruction. Much of that money went to private contractors and NGOs the US government tasked with implementing programs and projects to build Afghanistan’s security forces, improve governance, aid economic and social development and combat illicit drugs. There is however very little evidence of nation-building in Afghanistan after 20 years eg power stations, roads, schools, hospitals, industries, housing … etc.

President Biden’s inconsistent messages go beyond the subject of nation-building to the actual number of “real” Afghan forces actually trained and active, as well as the number of Americans finally left behind. Inconsistent messages, especially in the facts and reality, by leaders point inevitably to their detachment from the ecosystem environment which they were supposed to be in command of. The resulting leadership ineffectiveness and strategic failure sum up the bottom-line impact, as seen in Afghanistan.      

[9] Leaders Are Patient and Compassionate

It was very telling as one watched the 29 August video news from Dover Air Force Base to mark the return of the 13 US service members killed in Kabul on 26 August 2021.

The 13 US soldiers were killed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber outside the Kabul airport while helping to oversee the evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies.

As each coffin was carried off the Air Force C-17 plane, President Biden and his entourage of senior Cabinet and Pentagon officials saluted. During the event, he placed his right hand to his chest as the flag-draped coffins were carried off the Airplane.  After each coffin, Biden was seen to glance at his watch on his left hand repeatedly, as if impatiently waiting for the ceremony to end as soon as possible. This was not Biden’s first time attending such a ceremony.  

The ceremony was intended to be a “dignified transfer” of the fallen US soldiers. To many observers who have seen such a ceremony many times before, during the 20-year Afghanistan War, Biden’s action was disrespectful to say the least, since he was also blamed personally for the last-minute hurried evacuation from Kabul Airport.  

“It’s true. Joe Biden checked his watch during the dignified transfer of the servicemembers killing in Afghanistan at the airport,” columnist Nicholas Fondacaro wrote. “You can see him jerk his left hand to pull the watch out from under his sleeve, then look down at it,” he added.

Foreign policy analyst Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, said that “there is nothing more important than paying your respects to America’s fallen war heroes, Mr. President.”

Former White House doctor, US Congress Representative Dr Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said in a tweet: “Apparently our Commander-in-Chief has better things to do than honor the 13 service members who died on his watch?” “I’m DISGUSTED! God bless these heroes and their loved ones. They deserved better,” he added.

Leaders are compassionate and patient, while being respectful of fallen soldiers, especially on their watch and caused directly by their incompetent handling of the Kabul exit.

[10] Leadership Integrity through Consultation and Partnership

The manner of the US exit from Afghanistan, not the exit itself, seriously questions US leadership among its allies from Europe to the Middle East to Asia. By acting arbitrarily and unilaterally in all the decisions without any inputs or consultation with its allies in the last 15 days of August 2021, perhaps even from 3 months earlier, regarding Afghanistan, the efficacy of US leadership as a reliable and dependable partner has been severely negatively impacted. Without trust and mutual respect, US leadership begins now its slow and steady descent into irrelevance.  

US closest transatlantic allies in Europe are rightfully pissed by the absence of participation in Afghan exit decision-making regarding its timetable and operational details, nor any consultation and virtually no meaningful input from them.

In the British Parliament, President Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was condemned as "catastrophic" and "shameful" as both Houses of UK Parliament delivered an unprecedented rebuke to a US president. Across the political spectrum, MPs and Peers, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, put some blame for the Taliban's takeover and the chaos that followed on the US, Britain's closest ally. President Biden was accused of "throwing us and everybody else to the fire" by pulling out US troops and was called "dishonourable" for criticising Afghan forces for not having the will to fight. 

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who committed British troops into Afghanistan in 2001, branded Biden an “imbecile” (an idiot or stupid person) over the “tragic, dangerous and unnecessary” decision to quit Afghanistan amid claims Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s remarks: “we would be better off with Trump”. Tony added that Britain also has a “moral obligation” to stay until “all those who need to be are evacuated”. 

Also speaking in the British parliament, former Prime Minister Teresa May said, "What does it say about NATO, if we are entirely dependent on a unilateral decision by the US?"  In February 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron hinted that Europe needs to become less dependent on the US, saying, "I do believe the best possible involvement of Europe within NATO is to be much more in charge of its own security." The Afghan debacle confirmed that America's allies need to start looking beyond US leadership in global security, as reported by the CS Monitor. 

French President Emmanuel Macron was right to suggest that Europe needs to invest in greater “security autonomy” from the United States.

In Israel, one of America’s strongest Middle-East allies, a leading security commentator wrote that “the real effect on America’s allies, especially Israel and the pro-Western Arab regimes, is that America, now and for the foreseeable future, has a heightened awareness of its own limitations,” and that this meant the allies would have to be readier “to fend for themselves.”

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen’s lesson from Afghanistan is that “the only option for Taiwan is to make itself stronger, more united and more determined to defend itself.” She added that “it wasn’t a realistic option to rely on the ‘momentary goodwill’ of another country”. She was referring to the US, and especially the Biden Administration, from whom it had procured US$ billions of modern missiles, fighter aircraft, and weaponry over the years in preparation for an invasion by China, to whom it belongs. Repeated US political and security commitment with regard to Taiwan’s self-defined “sovereignty”, which is not recognised by the United Nations, should have been regarded as hollow and meaningless since the US has officially recognised China, whose sovereignty includes Taiwan.  In any case, no amount of modern US-supplied weaponry would have thwarted any Chinese invasion if and when it should ever happen. The latest US retreat from Afghanistan should also confirm that the USA would not commit troops to defend Taiwan’s non-existent “sovereignty” in the event of a Chinese invasion, just as it failed to keep its similar promises to Ukraine in 2014.  

Ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In 2014, the US stood with the world alongside the feckless United Nations in abject impotence and inept incompetence to watch Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, a province of Ukraine. The United States' failure to honor the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which provided security assurances against threats to Ukraine's territorial integrity, clearly emboldened Russia as she proceeded to instigate and support military aggression in the Ukrainian Donbas region.  Over the past years, more than a million Ukrainians have been displaced with more than 10,000 killed and thousands wounded. No less than US Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama also reiterated absolute US guarantee of these assurances over the preceding 20 years.    

The Afghan debacle confirmed that America's allies need to start looking beyond US leadership in global security, as reported by the CS Monitor. 

Leadership integrity is like a piece of paper. Once crumpled and compromised, leadership effectiveness suffers irreparably and could no longer be restored to its original quality.  

The 10 Lessons for Leadership Success from the 15-Day Kabul Leadership Course are:

[1] The Last Man Out – Mission Accomplished, But …

[2] Leaders Have Competent Judgement and Strategic Insight

[3] Leaders are Honest to the People

[4] Leaders Listen to Critical Intelligence

[5] Leaders Are Present During Crisis

[6] Leaders Take Questions from the People

[7] Leaders Hold Themselves Accountable by Being Responsible

[8] Leaders Communicate with Consistent Messages

[9] Leaders Are Patient and Compassionate

[10] Leadership Integrity through Consultation and Partnership

Leaders always have the welfare and interests of his people utmost in all that he/she does. This includes proper planning, allocation of resources, and perfect execution. The unfolding drama at Kabul, Afghanistan, is a clear example of the extremely poor, inept, and incompetent leadership of President Biden, as well as all the leaders in the US Congress.  Furthermore, the US' failure to keep its promises to supporters and stakeholders to evacuate them to safety is utter leadership failure to the nth degree. Only performance results and impact define the quality of leaders, not personality traits, and qualities. 

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